Behind the Marshall
by medea42
Summary: Marshall Mann has had his share of heartbreak, the kind that no woman could ever cause. Marshall/Mary, light, subvert romance, character study
1. Chapter 1: The Friendship

Summary: _Marshall's inner life and mysterious past suggest that this complicated man has much more heartbreak to his story than what might come from any woman, even Mary._

Spoilers: Will touch on Marshall throughout the series eps up to the end of S2.

Just to give it a try, I am breaking a personal rule and actually posting a continuous fic rather than a complete-only. We'll see how I do.

Standard disclaimer: this is an unauthorized derivative work based on the USA Network's original series In Plain Sight. I receive no profits from this work, and the intent of this work is to get more people interested in the show.

Marshall knew exactly when he and Mary became friends. It was the racketeering case. The 28 year old journalist wanted to stay in the business. Marshall agreed; it wasn't like his total of three bylines over the course of his career meant much. Mary violently and volubly disagreed. Stan herded them to the balcony so he could "hear himself think" and then locked them outside during the record-breaking hot July afternoon.

Mary glared at Stan, who mouthed through the window "Work it out!"

"Got a hairpin on you?" she asked Marshall.

"Why in the hell would I have a hairpin?" Marshall snapped at her.

"I don't know. You're being such a girl about our witness I assumed you'd have something girly on you."

Marshall wrinkled his nose. "Ha, ha. Your wit amazes me, Marshal Shannon."

Mary gave him a sidelong glance. "That's Mary to you, numbnuts. Now help me pick this lock."

Marshall stifled a smile. On their first day of work, he tried calling her Mary and she planted a booted foot on his instep. "And how did you pass the criminal background check for this job?"

"I needed something to go with my good looks and charm. Help me figure this out."

Marshall felt through his pockets. Keys, wallet, gun. Mary's firearm lay in her desk drawer. Stan checked that she was unarmed before locking them out, knowing full well that Mary would otherwise have shot the glass and been done with it. As Mary jiggled the lock, she resumed their previous argument. "We can't have him in the journalism field. It's just too small."

"He was working for a local daily paper, and hadn't even printed anything yet."

"Right. That rinky-dink local paper is one of thousands of rinky-dink papers owned by the Knight-Ridder chain."

Marshall glared at her. "So?"

"So that means that that paper is part of a national network, meaning that he's immediately listed on a national database of employees."

"We've had people work for franchises that were national chains without a problem."

"Yes, but there's a big difference between a franchise that involves filling a Slushy machine and one writing news stories. Gas stations don't usually keep employee pictures on file in a national database."

Marshall pulled out a credit card and handed it to Mary. "Sometimes the wiggling trick works."

Mary began jiggling at the lock while Marshall almost involuntarily launched into a monologue on the fourth estate. "It's an important role in our country, so why take a talented kid away from that?"

Mary set down the credit card. "OK, in the middle of that long and boring talk did you think about what journalists do?"

"They seek the truth –"

"And how do they do that?"

"Ask questions."

"And to do that what do they have to do?"

"Find people to ask those questions…oh." Marshall almost blushed. Some of those people would in turn ask questions about the reporter – lots of questions. The kind of questions that end with phone calls to editors at even crap weekly papers. Journalists all share a tendency to dig exactly where they are discouraged from going. It killed him a little. He knew what it meant, not to do the thing you invested your passion in. In this case, his own frustration made him overlook the obvious with his witness.

"So slinging coffee it is?"

"Yes. There's a Starbuck's on Academy Road that has an opening." Mary resumed jiggling.

Stan appeared at the door to unlock it. "What are you two doing out here? Come in before you idiots get heat stroke!"

Marshall and Mary shared a sidelong glance, and a single thought about Stan. _Asshole_.

With that shared thought, they were friends. Mary told Marshall to meet her for a drink at the end of the day. He didn't think twice. "You just assume I'm available tonight Marshal Shannon."

"You don't have any cases pending for the next two weeks. And call me Mary, numbnuts."

"How about you call me Marshall?"

"Sure thing numbnuts."


	2. Chapter 2: Breaking Fast

Their friendship and the reigning hostilities had a clear start, a spot on the calendar. A day each year when Marshall brought Mary a replacement for her whiskey stash. As to his more complicated feelings for her, he somehow missed the hum of his own body. His ambivalence about his job distracted him from other emotional signals. Some days his love and hate for what he did screamed with such emotional noise that he failed to notice his heart sped up when Mary walked into the room.

The only reason he'd paused at all was that case with the dirty cop. While Mary's ire rose at the very hint of a con artist, Marshall's disgust applied to corrupt members of law enforcement. The proper handling of badge and gun was religion in the Mann family, and the abuse of that power was the ultimate sin. He had to restrain himself from flashing his gun when he saw that asshole start sniffing at Mary during his witness briefing. He was hardly the first witness to do so, but something about this guy's interest in her really irritated him. Or maybe it was a climaxing irritation; he'd seen one male witness after another make passes at Mary, some she noticed, some she didn't. It just annoyed him. When the guy practically fell out of his chair trying to keep Mary's ass within view, Marshall hit his limit.

"Hey, don't." Marshall suspected he might be one of the only men raised to behave properly and respectfully around women. God knows his first-marshal-in-the-state grandmother had stories of the crap she tolerated. It made him wonder what Mary didn't tell him about.

"You have a partner that looks like that and you're getting all worked up about it?" Oh charming. This guy used his penis as an excuse to act like a jerk. Men like him felt entitled to attention from women. They also failed to appreciate it properly when a woman actually did grace them with her interest.

Marshall stared him down. Even in Chicago, some cops go their entire lives without ever firing their weapon. Federal marshals, on the other hand, expected at some point, to have to shoot someone. Marshall felt no threat whatsoever from this city cop; he was just tired of the endless sexual arrows directed at Mary.

Stan took him aside later. "So what was with you and the witness? Seemed a little tense."

Marshall shrugged eloquently. "We had different ideas about appropriate behavior."

Stan's eyebrows shut up. "Appropriate behavior regarding?"

"Mary."

"Yeah, some of our witnesses sure do like to try with her." Stan's cell phone rang. As he picked it up, he commented, "But given what she looks like, you kind of get used to it."

A question came to Marshall's mind. "Why am I getting less used to it?" Really, people hitting on Mary never used to register with him.

The next day, Mary seemed off. She looked both more relaxed and more tense at the same time. She also seemed determined to eat an enormous bear claw in as few bites as possible. "How are things with your mom?" To his surprise, he really wanted to know.

Mary gulped down an obscene-sized bite from her pastry. "OK. It'll be awhile before I adjust, but what can I do? Family's family."

Marshall pursed his lips. That was a pretty revealing non-answer from Mary.

She finished chewing. "Do me a favor?"

"Yeah?"

"Next time I decide to starve myself, shoot me."

"Glad to do it."

He sensed that Mary had broken fast on more than just a physical level.


	3. Chapter 3: A day in the life

It wasn't so much an invitation as a blackmail attempt. "It would mean so much," Jinx insisted. "Mary's so quiet about her friends." Marshall suspected this translated to Jinx learning much, much more about Mary's friends.

Shit. Marshall wasn't even sure how Jinx got his number. Maybe she pinched Mary's Blackberry while Mary slept; he hoped not. Marshals kept a lot of sensitive data on their persons. Data he considered far too sensitive for functional alcoholics like Mary's mother to handle wisely.

This also reminded him that Mary's birthday was coming – and Mary was always a bitch on her birthday. That temper only worsened since her mother appeared, and he expected that the presence of the woman who brought Mary into the world was not something that Mary herself appreciated.

Stan's phone rang a moment after Marshall extracted himself from Jinx's questions about why a handsome guy like him did not have a date to her daughter's party. "How can I help you, Mrs. Shannon?"

Shit. They were both going to catch hell for that one. Marshall didn't need to look busy – a federal marshal is always busy.

When Mary came back from her witness check-in, it only got worse. She threw her gun in her drawer with enough force that Marshall thought it might release. He already knew not to ask her the problem. If he asked, Mary would tell him, in detail, along with her present opinion of him, his mother and his place in the known universe. The diatribe usually ended in a variation ranging between "numbnuts" and "moron."

Stan approached, phone still in hand. Yes, they were both in trouble, especially now that Stan experienced Jinx firsthand. "My sister's coming!" Mary shrieked. At this, their boss immediately turned heel and left the room.

At least they were both off the hook for the whole Jinx getting a hold of non-public WITSEC work numbers. But between Stan's wrath or Mary's tantrum, Marshall preferred the possible suspension that Stan offered. Not that that kept him safe – Mary still knew where he lived.

On Mary's birthday, Marshall had three intakes from the previous week to check in, a pending case the next week and a whole lot of financial piles to transfer so witnesses could do things like eat. Even so, he was excited to pick up the Ukrainian witness. He even went online to brush up on his Russian. At last, a chance to use it! It might make up for his secret disappointment the day the Berlin wall fell.

That was the first of many strikeouts that day.

And Mary was in rare form. He volunteered to do her paperwork for her in part to avoid her buffet of angry outbursts. When she snapped at him about Santoro's kid, he wondered if he needed to start seeing his own witnesses on the sly. Yes, a strikeout day.

Especially when Mary returned to their office to report that she smacked an indian in the Johnson.

"Haven't we done enough to those people?" _Haven't you done enough to me today?_ he added silently.

Just in case, he also bookmarked the site for the local tribal council. The file on his browser said "References." Each one linked to a site where he or Stan might expect to field a complaint about Mary.

Looking back that evening, Marshall considered the best part of his day getting slapped by the housekeeper. He meant to say "You look lovely" rather than the more … overt…statement that the online ASL guide revealed he actually said. He almost went back to ask for her number or email, but Mary was off with the phone.

Damn, did Mary give good phone.

At the birthday party, he kept a beer in his hand that he never drank. Although technically both he and Mary were off duty, he remembered the Ukrainian witness who needed groceries, even if Mary forgot. Besides, he could have canceled the birthday party, and would have – right up until Mary snapped at him about his witnesses.

Oh hell no, she got to suffer, too then.

He circulated the party, observing. Jinx, of course, loved to chat up everyone, especially some guy with an eye patch. Stan seemed charmed by her. But no one really asked about Mary.

He asked three or four people how they knew Mary. "Oh, I'm a friend of her mother's." Most were drunk. One thought her name was actually Sherry. He wished Raphael were there, because then at least he could talk baseball.

Marshall surreptitiously poured his beer on the ground, and felt too happy to take off when Mary came thundering out of the house with a terse, "Let's go."

It wasn't really her party anyway.

Things got closed up nicely on the Santoro case, and WITSEC was safe for another day. That police detective asking if Mary was seeing anyone during the end game was just the weird cap to the weird day. Who the hell thinks about a date when you're booking someone? Then again, Marshall had never met a cop that dressed like that guy, either.

When Mary pulled up in front of the 7-11, he turned to her. "I know what you're going to ask, and the answer is no."

"Fine," Mary snapped. "I'll pick out the porn magazines for our witness myself."

A moment later she popped her head back through the window. "Uh, what's the one that's all about the breasts?"

Marshall kept his eyes on hers. It had been a long day, and she was still wearing that tank top. And he was, after everything, still a guy.


	4. Chapter 4: Hoosier, you sure?

The jammies were a gift from his mother. It was an inside joke, actually - he kept building tiny model airplanes that he flew over the Nevada desert. Once, he attempted to fly a hamster, soared too close to an owl, and it ended in tragedy. That night, his mother presented him with his first telescope. Now, it was a transition - from airplanes to the sky.

He liked those pajamas; they fit comfortably and gave him a sense of comfort and connection, especially on this case with Lonnie. Marshall was raised to believe that ultimately everyone has good in them and that some people found the wherewithal to use it. Lonnie learned the opposite by age seven. While the Billups family overturned a lot of lessons the boy learned from his dad, it could all disappear in an instant if the judge reassigned custody. The thought made Marshall's blood run cold.

Lonnie also enjoyed pajamas, he could see, though likely they did not hold memories of fond support. The little boy in front of him eyed Marshall's choice of sleepwear with a disapproving glint reminiscent of Marshall's father. "Nice jammies," Marshall commented, retreating to the bedroom next door for the night.

He smirked to himself when he heard, through his bedroom wall, Mary tell Lonnie, "That's one badass law man." At least he knew he never needed to prove himself.

Mary, on the other hand, always had something to prove, and he could tell it was especially true on this case. The tip off was that she almost bought a gift for Lonnie's adoption party. Sure, she cared about all her witnesses, but Lonnie was special to her, maybe because of the three weeks he lived with her until she found a family enrolled in WITSEC to take him.

Pissing off Mary by then presenting a gift was just fun.

He melted right along with Lonnie over the Billups new baby. Marshall loved children, even if in good conscience he would never have any. It touched him deeply to see the baby help Lonnie turn back into a child. He wasn't as connected to the boy as Mary was, but he still felt protective about both boy and partner.

So, in Indianapolis when he went toe-to-toe with the boy's father and then the case immediately went south, he worried. Mary dealt with witnesses disappointing her badly, especially those that slid back into criminal habits. But this scenario, where neither she nor Lonnie held any cards, this might get ugly.

The bombing made it officially ugly, and Mary was worked up enough at the other marshal's casual attitudes towards caring for the boy. He understood this; the situation merited nearly twenty US marshals on round the clock service, and not one of them gave genuine thought to the situation. They were protecting a kid left alone by their own government. He silently awarded her points for not blowing up in front of Lonnie after the judge insisted on a morning meeting; demonstrating sensitivity took a little extra for her. He would have to reward her restraint indirectly.

He also knew Mary kept something from him about the witness that she didn't know earlier that day. Her disappearance into the night spoke volumes. Not pushing when she returned as mysteriously as she left was her reward. Marshall believed in the book, though the Marshal Service and WITSEC manuals allowed limited interpretation. Mary believed in the situation. Both approaches had their merits.

Her witness, her call. So when she did appear at 2 am, telling him she might refuse to turn Lonnie over, he said what he found himself saying to her at least twice a week. "Just tell me what you need."

As she said thanks and walked away, a feeling welled up in his chest and burst out. He said that to her a lot and he knew he would do anything she asked in those moments – and lately, there were more and more of those moments.

He also felt nonplussed at the final hearing the next morning. Lonnie had some questions in his role as a ten year old going on forty. He impressed Mary. "Finally, I meet a guy that gets me and he's ten," she said. Marshall did a double take, and stopped himself from bursting out with, "Am I not even here?"

As it was, he knew Mary's disappearance the previous evening had everything to do with McRoy abruptly dropping his case. He wondered how many protocols she violated.

At the Indianapolis airport he caught a moment with Mary while the other marshals circled around McRoy and Lonnie. He knew Mary did something, now that they had a whole new witness to protect. "I have to know…what did you do?"

Mary shrugged. "I made it clear I'd kidnap his son and go on the lam."

_Oh Christ._ "Then I'm glad it all worked out."

Mary muttered something about coffee, and he wondered what exactly to say to Stan when his boss asked. He picked up some pamphlets for tourists sitting next to the check desk – the one about the gun museum in New Alexandria, Indiana looked interesting. Huh, he never thought of Hoosiers as great shooters.

As he stood with Stan watching Mary explain to the Billups the presence of Lonny's father, he pressed his lips together. If Mary ran off with the boy, he would have stayed behind – if that's what Mary needed.


	5. Chapter 5:Never the Bride, Never the Guy

Every morning, Marshall Mann's first thoughts upon waking revolved around his partner. Her presence and memory wove into his daily action, because most days she needed something from him. He was partner, caretaker, rabbi and zookeeper. Some days he helped her with her paperwork. Other days he backtracked with people she yelled at to reduce the paperwork on her.

At the end of each day, he still found his thoughts drifting to Mary. He might read something random on Wikipedia, or see one of those unfortunately worded signs outside an Albuquerque church, such as "We love your children!" and casually wonder what Mary might think. Marshall assumed this was natural: WITSEC consumes the lives of its marshals. When not at work he spent the bulk of his social time with Mary, since she was as likely to get called into work on an emergency as he was. He did much the same with Steve and Greg, two partners that preceded Mary. You make friends with people who share your schedule, and the only people in WITSEC to share your schedule are the other marshals.

He spent a little less time with her lately – this Raphael she dated took a lot of attention, and she gave it more willingly than the norm. Normally Mary's guys were only blips, a Wednesday or two off from Mary duty for him. No one before had held on to her this long, and Marshall felt the absence. Despite eighteen hour days and frequent travel, he sensed a small void in his life. So he did what a badass lawman would do to fill it.

He looked for a way to meet women.

The dance school over on Girard Avenue fit perfectly. The salsa classes were the right ratio of single women to the correct absence of available male partners. Also, most were in their 30s, educated, and all wore heels to dance. Stan gladly let him insist he had a private appointment on Fridays. Weekend intakes were a bitch and it gave Stan an excuse to refuse them.

That particular Friday, Mary asked him to schlep her to the mechanic's and then on to her massage appointment. In return she offered him a half-assed breakfast by the pool while they shared his morning paper. It felt nice, sitting between the Shannon sisters and enjoying the sports pages. After all, as Mary's partner and primary handler he did consider himself in some ways part of the family. When the sports page revealed a full-color picture of the shortstop on the Isotopes, Raphael in all his glory, he took the opportunity to probe Mary about that relationship's status.

Normally when he asked about one of her boyfriends, Mary snapped something about hair braiding and pillow fights. But with the power of the almighty sports page – and the raised possibility of Raphael leaving town – he probed. He just wanted to know if she was seeing someone, because, as he realized after Dershowitz asked about her, he really didn't know.

"It says your," he paused to maximize possible reaction, "boyfriend… is on a winning streak." He watched her carefully.

"I'm happy for him. And he's not my boyfriend." Yes, something was definitely up.

It wasn't the first time he saw Mary act like China to some poor guy's Taiwan. So in Mary-speak, Mary was available. But in Mary reality, she had a boyfriend. She just didn't know what to do with him.

Marshall was distracted from pursuing the conversation by Brandi untying her top. He would swear it was an involuntary reflex. Mary bounced a strawberry off the side of his head. "Hey, these are my mambo pants!" Oh hell. That was one activity he meant to protect from Mary.

He silently thanked the witness that caused Mary to abandon her morning plans. He never met this witness, but judging from Mary's reaction, she was on his partner's least favorite list. While curious, it saved him from an interrogation about mambo.

When Brandi called, "Can somebody do me?" he raced automatically, but two steps away he deliberately stumbled. Thus he honored his own inner horny caveman, but also let Brandi get the attention she really wanted from the pool boy. Besides, he might look, but he knew better than most that Brandi's older sister owned guns.

Marshall defaulted to work, and with his paperwork filed and no intakes, he cued up some music on ITunes to practice his steps. He had his eye on the brunette with the red heels and he needed perfect form to impress her.

He was just working out the weight shift between steps three and four when Mary stormed in. The routine between his boss and his partner wasn't _Who's on First_ so much as _Pardon My Sarong_. If he weren't counting, he might have laughed. Just in the middle of a transition from step eight back to one, Stan cut his music. "Stop that!"

As Mary watched open-mouthed their boss barked him through his dance steps. "The peacock struts!" After a few minutes, she turned on her heel and left. "Is she gone?" Stan murmured after the music switched to a less-brassy song at a slower tempo.

Marshall nodded.

"Thank God." Stan stepped away from his marshal. "Remember to move your hips!" he shot at Marshall before retreating to his office.

A week later, Mary's obscenity-laced phone call about the photographer actually centered more around the bridesmaid dress than it did on any danger to her witness. She left the distinct impression she was more annoyed that the witness was not harmed, because Treena remaining alive meant Mary wearing that dress in public. Her diatribe about red, purple, and why all brides were going to hell included some very specific people in the bridal industry that she wished to pistol whip. While she ranted, Marshall looked up crinoline on Encyclopedia Britannica and it turned into something of a research spree. It gave him something to think about while she purged.

Stan's calming presence when Mary returned to the office did relieve Marshall of further verbal abuse, although the strange expressions on her face as Stan inspected the dress raised alarm bells. Marshall always got nervous when Stan and Mary fell into sync; those occasions rarely ended well for him. The last time he caught an exchange between them like that, he found a good chunk of his office supplies super-glued to the ceiling the following day. Ever after that he made sure he was the last to leave the office for the night, and when possible the first to arrive during the day. Finding the right solvent to retrieve his stapler took weeks, and without an office manager he was forced to get replacements for some of his supplies on his own time.

Marshall was on surveillance at the bachelorette party for forty-five minutes before Mary arrived. She mentioned when she called she had some wardrobe problem. He assumed she didn't know where to conceal her gun; she rarely wore dresses and hiding weaponry in them is an art form. He thought longingly of the brunette with the red heels in mambo class, sad he missed out on a chance to talk to her – and then Mary arrived.

Marshall saw Mary in all her permutations, or thought he did. Even in court, she always wore a pantsuit, and out of court she wore jeans and clothing that made it easy to conceal a gun. She, like other law enforcement types, dressed tactically. Slight out-of-context outfits, like Mary in the bridesmaid's dress, was just funny.

But this…this was almost blinding.

The sequined black number clung to every curve and offered up all the good stuff on a platter. The creature in front of him bore only a passing resemblance to his partner. This woman was the mystery at the end of the bar, the one who blew on his dice at the casino, the one whose bolero and dress landed on the floor as he explored every curve of her fantasy. Internal doors between his conscious and subconscious mind burst off the hinges under the hormonal tidal wave. Marshall didn't know what hit him. "Holy jeez," he said, trying to gather himself in this unexpected confrontation between his body and his partner.

He stopped himself before he said "You look hot," replacing it quickly with "nice." She might look like a dream stepped out of the pages of Frederick's of Hollywood, but unlike the lingerie models she probably found a way to conceal at least three guns under that tiny number. He wondered where. This prompted several graphic, naughty, frankly disturbing images in the space of a two-minute conversation.

The images wouldn't stop. He focused on work, babbling through the rundown, averting his eyes to keep his tongue from lolling onto the dirt lot. Feelings he normally kept at bay overwhelmed him, at this worst of all times.

Mary, sensing change, got confrontational. "For God's sake, it's not like I'm naked!"

He struggled to verbalize. "Naked would be better. That makes me feel so…dirty." This was his partner, his responsibility, his best friend. This was an unbelievably gorgeous woman wrapped up like a present for some lucky man to unwrap.

She called him Pervis and stomped off as much as anyone can stomp in spike heels. Marshall caught himself staring at her ass and legs as though his eyes were magnetically drawn to them. He caught himself and tried to think calming thoughts. Anger burned from the pit of his stomach: anger at Mary for giving him a hard time, and anger at himself, for giving her reason to. Lust leaked into the mix, making his gut ache.

Marshall caught himself several times looking for Mary instead of checking for suspicious behavior. This did nothing to help his mood or his anger towards his partner. When a radio call came in telling him police were coming out to the location, he knocked his head back against his car's headrest. Bobby Dershowitz was always on duty when something went wrong, and Marshall could imagine what he might think about seeing Mary in that dress. He took a few calming breaths before getting out of the car.

He tried to prepare himself as he stepped into the house. Mary just left him while in a full snit, she openly disliked this witness and he smarted more than normal from their last exchange. His own bad mood was not helped when he spotted Mary.

To casual appearances, she was violating protocol so badly it begged for mercy. She was talking to a naked man, head down, a sad but friendly smile on her face. It seemed like she was flirting. A wave or resentment for the stripper tore out of his solar plexus through his feet.

He exhaled. They were both on duty, and it was his job to keep a cool head. Whatever this was, he was her partner, first.

Marshall only heard the tale end of the conversation. "You know how it is, you're in law enforcement."

He did not like what he was seeing. "You been drinking?" He dragged her off while she attempted to guess either names or membership cards.

Mary was on an uncharacteristic chatty streak, and given her out-of-character appearance, it did set off alarm bells. "Sad thing is, he really is Albuquerque PD. He's moonlighting." Marshall did not want to discuss Mary's new friend. He did his duty, pointed out Dershowitz, and stalked into the party while she talked to her other new friend, Bobby D.

While the heat towards Mary remained, all resentment for the stripper-cop disappeared when the party guests forced him into a chair and began grinding on him for the camera. Officer Rod looked at him with pleading eyes. Marshall cringed on his behalf. When Mary came over to tell him that the diamond thieves were in town, he felt only too glad to shut down the party if just to save Rod further torment.

His first act of protection was to disengage the stripper and find his pants while Mary explained the situation to Treena. This had the desired effect. With no naked man to torture, the guests considered the party over. Mary introduced Marshall to Treena, and the guarding began – with her immediately telling him she needed to visit the bathroom.

Witnesses were allowed to pee and Treena did look a touch green. He initially heard the telltale gagging, the toilet flushing several times, and then running water. Even so, when Mary called, the knot in his stomach went cold and sank. Sure enough the bathroom was empty with the window curtains waving in the desert breeze. Hell, it wasn't the first time that night he felt like an asshole.

Thankfully Mary and he did their best work together in crisis mode. His swift communication about where the stables were located and their quick conferral outside felt good, and right. The earlier incident of the night no longer mattered because here they were doing what they did best – together.

Marshall forced himself not to speculate as to where Mary stashed her guns in that dress.

When she ushered him into the stall, he expected a quick assessment of the situation, an extra weapon, a GPS chip, or possibly for her to hand him a grenade. All were more likely than what she did do.

"Follow my lead!" was proceeded with her lips on his. It wasn't fair, really. All the crises that night kept him from rebuilding those doors between conscious and subconscious. The tidal pool of hormones whipped into a tsunami. His brain shut off. Her sweet-smelling skin and the soft texture of her lips opened him to her, and he reached out wanting to get as close as he could to her heat.

Mary's arm to his trachea snapped him out of his lusty surrender. "What are you doing?"

"What the hell are you doing?" He was dizzy, breathless, metaphorically knocked off his feet. Mary was marching purposefully straight to her witness, leaving him to catch up and shut up.

He shoved aside confusion and humiliation as his brain rebooted. They were in a dangerous situation, it was Mary's witness and he needed to fall in line.

Mary then created so much chaos he wasn't sure where to aim his gun. He did think, "Attagirl!" when she managed to bring down the chief diamond smuggler face-first in horse manure.

"Need a hand?" he asked.

"Not now," Mary snapped. "Unless you wanna go after the other guy." The way she tilted her head he knew she was pissed at his performance.

A little bit of his earlier anger returned. "Despite my athletic prowess and desire to please you, I cannot outrun a horse." He holstered his gun, eager to get all lipstick and weirdness off his face.

They wrapped up the end game by calling Dershowitz. Gathering statements from witnesses and themselves took around two hours. Marshall hoped Mary forgot about the kiss incident by then, because he wanted to pretend it never happened.

Unfortunately for Marshall, one area Mary did not have issues was denial. She did not practice it. "So what's the deal with that kiss?"

"What kiss?" He pretended, very hard, he did not know of what she spoke.

"In the barn." So much for her pretending along with him that that didn't happen.

Fine. "You kissed me." He did not invite Mary to appear out of nowhere looking like a deviant fantasy version of herself, nor did he ask her to rub her lips over his overheated-from-the-sight-of-her skin.

"Nuh uh," she snapped back. "I was smearing lipstick on you. You acted like a guy who was ready to break himself off some. With two armed assassins standing fifteen feet away, you were all ready to throw down with your best friend."

Marshall's composure completely escaped his grasp for the thousandth time that night. "I'm a guy. It's what we do!" he snapped. Even he knew his actions were indefensible.

Then Dershowitz cowboyed on by, having caught the man that Marshall let escape.

He did a double take. The perpetrator was actually in a lasso. "How cool is that?"

"Where the hell's he get a lasso?" At last the subject changed.

Marshall sat behind the wheel of his car before taking off, just breathing and centering. Mary had a rising star baseball player boyfriend, and another potential suitor who was a well-dressed cowboy cop. Everyone in her world was cooler than him. As he drove home, Marshall revisited that dark place in every person's mind, the one located between seventh grade, old lady perfume and hell.

Marshall was grateful for the day off between the bachelorette party and the wedding. For that day, he did what any other single, unattached man would do: he spent some of his time watching porn, and then he read up on the works of Honore' de Balzac. He thought about his job in WITSEC and what it did to his life. So much of it was just Mary, Mary's needs and how he did everything he could for them, in a way he never did for earlier partners. This incident with kissing Mary was a wake up call. He had unfulfilled needs.

At the wedding Stan appeared at his elbow. "Actually, she looks gorgeous in that dress." Marshall nodded appreciatively along with his boss, both casting admiring looks her way.

Mary seemed more mellow standing outside the church. She gave both a diffident blush – and he saw a real smile on her face as she threw rice after the couple. He felt his heart flutter and stretch at the rare sight of a Mary Shannon smile.

Then he saw her pull out her cell phone, and could tell from the slightly strained expression that the call was from Raphael.

"I'll call you later," Mary said to Marshall before she ran off to talk to the bride.

"Alrighty-o," he answered. They wouldn't discuss Raphael, he knew that. They also wouldn't discuss the stable incident. She'd ask a favor, and he'd do it. Because he was Marshall, and she was Mary, and that's what they did.

He double checked that his cell phone was on. He would stay up all night if he had to, just waiting for her call.


	6. Chapter 6:Living down the kiss

Marshall hoped that when Treena Morris handed Mary her opt-out card his partner would forget the entire fiasco. Mary instead amused herself by challenging him belligerently to kiss her at even the slightest workplace disagreement for the next two weeks. She never did so in front of Stan, but even without the embarrassment of his boss knowing about their misadventure, she forced him to relive his humiliation over and over.

After an hour-long argument about whether or not due process allowed her to detain a suspicious florist degraded into name calling, Mary began making kissing faces at Marshall whenever Stan turned his back.

He hit his limit the fifth time Stan walked past her. Marshall raised his hand and threw a pen on his desk. "Stan," he called, keeping his eyes on Mary, "I'm going to need the day off tomorrow."

Stan didn't look up from the faxes he shuffled. "You got it."

Mary exploded. "That isn't fair – when's the last time I got a day off?"

"You've had your fair share of personal time." Stan dropped the remaining papers on her desk. "I'm sure you can coordinate something with your partner. Hey, I have a thing in fifteen minutes. Finish those for me, will you?"

Mary glared, but accepted the papers. "Why can't Marshall do this? His stuff all cleared already."

Stan gave Mary an innocent, slightly bewildered look. "Marshall has the day off tomorrow. I thought it'd be nice to give him a head start."

"Besides," Marshall said, "I did my work right the first time."

Mary made a strangled noise and slammed her own pen to her desk.

Marshall gave her a broad, malicious grin.

No further kissy-face was attempted.

Marshall thoroughly enjoyed his day off. After a morning reading favorite passages from the first volume of the Rise and Fall of Rome, he spent the afternoon hiking out at Petroglyph National Monument. He kept his phone off – Mary would not accede to his little vacation graciously.

Despite the clarity of the day and the desert, everywhere he turned he saw Mary. He saw her face squinting in the sun, the pout of her lips, the flush of her cheeks when she really lost her temper. He caught himself imagining caressing her shoulders, hands sliding down her body. Then he would catch himself.

When he cleared his head from Mary, he caught himself wondering whether he might find any witnesses in fetal position in the corner of the conference room again.

If he didn't think about Mary, he still wound up thinking about Mary. This was no way to live.

That evening he checked his Blackberry for information about a witness transfer in Arizona. The tally of calls, texts and emails came to 37; 35 of the communiqués were from Mary.

He briefly glanced through the texts, in case she said something important. The majority were one-line insults. "Nerd." "Doofus." "Jackass." "Donkeyhat" – that one was interesting. "Numbnuts" was used twice. A few of them strung together American swear words with some rather nasty Spanish that Raphael probably imparted.

After he flagged the witness transfer data from Stan, he tossed the Blackberry on his bed and pulled out his suitcase. Once he packed for the trip to Mesa, he meant to send out a few texts of his own. None of those texts or emails involved Mary or Mary's constant demands. This was for him, and him alone.

He needed to get away from her.

The Bank of the West tower looked bland and stoic to Marshall, even more so on the inside. Despite its flavorless appearance, the building housed some of the most influential businesses in New Mexico history. Marshall tried to recall them as he rode the elevator to the 15th floor: a frozen foods business, the offices of an equestrian riding and breeding outfit, the bank itself, of course, and Petersen Consulting.

Petersen did all sorts of interesting things in private security, with clients that included casinos, banks and certain branches of the Federal Reserve. Marshall could enjoy seeing firsthand the creation and execution of new technologies to prevent theft, preserve the safety of specific clients and to sometimes out-con certain con artists. The consultant position also offered full health insurance, a 401K that vested after six months and three weeks of vacation plus moving holidays in the first year. No consultant ever worked more than fifty hours a week.

Marshall's eyes misted for a moment at the idea of all that free time to read.

Petersen, as it turned out, was actually a man named Simms. He was as tall and wiry as Marshall, but with blond hair and paler blue eyes. "We just liked the name," he explained, shaking Marshall's hand firmly without attempting a show of finger-crushing strength.

As Simms ushered them along to a conference room, Marshall observed, "A name just memorable enough to forget?" Marshall knew all about that.

Both men were forced to duck beneath the door frame to avoid knocking their heads on the way into the conference room.

Simms grinned, looking directly into Marshall's eyes. "Marshal Mann, I like how you think!"

Marshall grinned back. He wondered for a flickering moment what Mary would think of Simms.

Simms offered the job at Petersen on the spot. Marshall knew from studying up on civilian job hunt strategy to refuse that first offer. "I still have some loose ends to tie up at my current job," he explained. He did. If he took the consulting job he could not leave all of his witnesses to Mary's care. Their individual caseloads were already too much for one person, and no matter how he felt about her, he would not leave all of his work for her to do. Although a resentful thought about how often he wound up doing her work did sneak into his mind.

Simms shook his hand and assured him, "You'll hear from us! Where can we contact you?"

Marshall took a moment to deliberate. "Send it to my office." He left the address with Simms' administrative assistant.

Marshall felt great about the interview, and enjoyed the glow of a really good talk with a human being who was not in danger or a danger. He got into the lot at the Sunshine Building, all the way up the elevator, and all the way to his desk, before the feeling was ruined.

"Where the hell have you been?" Mary snapped at him without waiting for an answer. "Let's go!"

Marshall sighed, pulled his gun from his drawer and followed his partner. As always, Mary's work came first.


	7. Chapter 7: Dun dun dunnnn

For the week after the interview at Petersen Consulting, Marshall refused to engage when Mary sniped at him. Along with sidestepping her every flame he also dropped all little acts of care. He quit bringing doughnuts and coffee. He casually forgot to bookmark websites of organizations that represented the people Mary offended. He only returned texts from her when explicitly business related. When Stan brought doughnuts, he went ahead and snagged the bear claw he normally left for Mary.

Marshall had deferred his decision about the job for two phone calls, but now a letter arrived spelling out an offer even more generous than mentioned in the interview. "We look forward to hearing from you," the letter closed. In corporate, this meant the ball was in his court. He just needed to make up his mind whether to leave the Marshal Service, his heritage and Mary for the greater possibilities of the unknown or to stay with what he knew.

Mary's voice heralding hot coffee made him jump. He was not ready to have a conversation with her, not about this.

"Half-caff triple capp heavy foam," she plunked the beverage on his desk. He almost burned his hand preventing a slosh. For a moment he was impressed: she paid enough attention to detail to know his customary drink order. He was also immediately on guard. Mary was not generous. Buying coffee was one of her classic good-cop build rapport moves.

The shock on his face registered with her a bit too fast. She was definitely fishing. "What? Can't a co-worker treat another coworker to a complicated coffee beverage?"

_Co-worker_. Three weeks ago she referred to him as "best friend." Oh yes, Mary suspected something.

"Not when the co-worker is you. You're not a treater." He saw the fighting expression cross her face, and immediately softened his words with a smile. "Not a criticism, just an observation."

Criticisms began bickering matches, and while he did not know the details yet, he knew the day ahead involved him, Mary and a long ride in a government-issue SUV.

She responded by asking for the money. He gave it to her, frowning. "You didn't tip."

"They poor coffee, they're not waiters." No, Mary was not a generous woman.

Just then Stan called them into the office. "Coming darling," Marshall answered. Stan was the only man he knew in law enforcement who could handle that type of ribbing. At five foot two, you don't get to a position like Stan's without knowing something about yourself that equips you to handle anything – even smartass remarks from your marshals.

Marshall hoped he might talk to Stan first about the job offer. But first he needed to make up his mind.

Marshall considered dropping the letter in a drawer – too obvious – or taking it with him into the meeting. He could easily cover it with the legal pad he used for notes. Instead, he left it out on his desk, underneath his phone message pad. The letter sat, innocuous – unless you were fishing.

Stan called Mary twice more before she joined them in the meeting. Marshall chose not to think about what that meant.

While all situations that crossed their paths held strange elements, this particular case felt weird from the get-go. As Stan explained about the witness they were transporting, Marshall felt the need to probe. "As what – her poolboy? Butler? Bullet holder?"

Mary's derisive laugh interrupted his train of thought, and Stan's.

After exchanging an alarmed look, Stan forged on. While all the details were covered, Marshall still had the nagging feeling that they all missed something essential.

As Mary snapped "Fine," and stalked out of the room, Marshall had a sneaking suspicion he knew the cause of today's antagonism.

"What's with the mood?" Stan asked him.

"I have no idea." Actually, he had a guess, but did not want to involve Stan. He quickly constructed a small answer, something that would make Stan feel like he fixed it. "Oh, wait, she wanted me to get four bucks for the coffee."

Stan gave him five. "She likes it when she comes out ahead." This was code: _I'm glad she's mad at you and not me._

Normally Marshall enjoyed driving trips with his partner. He and Mary would talk protocol, and then descend into some discussion where Mary might rant about the condition of the world and human misery or he might edify her on why concrete made superior roads. Unfortunately, Mary packed up her mood and brought it as a third wheel on their trip.

She popped her headphones in, ignoring his "Hey." He decided not to share his reservations about the witness, since she obviously didn't care to listen. Besides, it was a routine transfer and ultimately up to his assigned marshals to figure out the guy's real story. He mentally added Mary's behavior to his list of reasons to leave, and drove on to Perryville in silence.

The wait at the prison took three times as long as normal, and with Mary's alternate pouting and snapping, it felt to Marshall like hours. He got himself a cup of godawful prison coffee. He finally spoke because the wait and Mary were both getting to him. "Obviously you want me to go on a fishing expedition to find out what the hell's bothering you, but I'm not going to play that." He meant it. "So when you decide to tell me what's bothering you, you tell me. Fair enough?" Mary continued to pout like a sullen child. He leaned into her, just as he sometimes did with his teenage witnesses. "Fair enough?"

She averted her eyes. "Don't worry about it. In a couple months we won't even be working together."

"You read my letter." She failed his test. He only expected to feel disappointment, but instead he felt a white hot bolt of anger. Part of that anger was directed at his own lack of surprise.

A slow volcano of words began pushing their way from within him, but he was forced to stop and swallow them at the abrupt delivery of Horst.

"Hey watch it pervoid, I don't swing that way." Great, a smartass witness. Marshall casually pinched Horst's trachea. "I can't believe you read my mail."

"What you don't know is that I always read your mail," Mary snapped back. Actually, he did know. Or, more precisely, he knew now.

As Mary insisted on the blood sugar numbers, Marshall sniped back at her. "She needs to know everything about everybody." He could only maintain maturity for so long, and Mary brought out his more Id-like instincts.

"So were you ever gonna tell me or was I going to find out when you just stopped showing up for work?"

_Like you'd notice. _"Actually I was going to write a letter and mail it to myself. That way I'd be sure you got the news." Especially since she had no respect for him, his privacy or what he might want for his own career or God forbid, happiness.

"Please don't act like you're the injured party here. At least show me that much respect."

Marshall was almost flattened by his own disbelief. "Respect? When have you ever shown me respect? Or anyone else, for that matter?"

"Well you'd get respect if you ever actually did something to earn it."

_Unbelievable._ "And you wonder why I didn't share my future plans with you."

"No, what I wonder is why I put up with your insipid running commentary for the past three years." Three years of running errands, overnights, watching her back, running personal errands when her car broke down, helping her fend off her family – all without a please or thank you from her. Nice to feel appreciated.

And Marshall could swear Horst was trying to exacerbate their fight.

"Give me the keys, I'm driving," Mary demanded.

"Try not to drive like you stole it," he snapped. He made the dig just because any comparisons to Brandi really pissed Mary off.

They were only three miles from the prison when Horst began whining for the bathroom. "I'm diabetic, that's just the way it is," he'd complained.

After his fifth whine, Mary lost patience. "Hold it in or hang it out the window, because we're not stopping!" Marshall could tell that Mary shared his mistrust of this witness. At least on that much, they were in sync. Neither one felt bad about letting their personal fallout land on this guy because something about him was amiss.

"You know, your job transfer's really starting to make sense to me." Marshall recognized Horst's attempt at manipulative identification. But he still took pleasure in the way it made Mary's pinched expression contract further.

When Horst began talking up Lola's services on behalf of the lanky marshal's career, Marshall was only too happy to let him continue for Mary to hear. Everything Horst said thoroughly communicated his displeasure to Mary, and it let Mary develop her own suspicions about the guy.

The couple that dropped the bottle under the SUV also seemed off to him. The way the bottle fell, and the way the couple looked so carefully average struck him as wrong.

As he waited at the SUV for Mary to return with Horst, he mentally phrased his acceptance of the position at Petersen. He likely had to give sixty days notice, and the new job paid enough he could hire a cleaning service for his apartment.

He suppressed a snicker to himself when Mary slammed Horst into the back of the SUV. This guy was their least favorite witness of all: the kind that acted like he was getting away with something.

The resentful silence as they drove away from the station eventually got to him. "I was going to tell you."

"Really? When?"

"I just wanted to – "

"I'm checking in with Stan." Mary would do anything except actually listen to his side.

He bit his tongue to prevent himself from asking her why the hell she cared. He suspected the answer would only anger him more. "Don't bother. The mountains are full of iron. Wreaks havoc with the radio signals."

"God damn it."

"It's no big deal. We're right on schedule." _I might change my job, I'm not joining the Foreign Legion._

"No," her tone changed. "Look at the dash."

"Better pull over before the engine seizes"

Of course, Horst bitched about it, keeping both their minds not just on their hostilities but on how Horst seemed determined to make the situation between them worse.

Marshall knew very little about actual auto mechanics. He could change oil himself on a car made after 1990, and all marshals had to know where a distributor cap and spark plugs were located since it was a common way of disabling a target's ability to escape. His role beneath the hood beyond that was purely ceremonial. He volunteered mostly because it felt good to get at least that much space between himself and Mary.

"See anything?" Of course she expected him to magically know.

"Hang on. It's complicated under here!" Nothing showed any obvious damage. A few more ungenerous thoughts about Mary crossed Marshall's mind as he checked the undercarriage again.

The radiator was leaking, and the hose break looked strange. He took a cloth and wiped along the leak, pausing for a sniff. It smelled acrid, a burning sourness that made him choke a little.

The involuntary response to the smell was why Marshall didn't hear Mary's warning. His mind had already wandered into a connective problem-solving state, so he just did not register the man and woman from the gas station firing on him. He was trying to figure out what Mary said, and then he found himself flat on his back.

Marshall operated on instinct. The adrenaline surge at the sound of continued gunfire pushed him back to his feet, and he felt a fleeting appreciation for Mary's quick thinking in using the SUV as his cover. When the shooters retreated, he felt relief that both he and Mary were standing. It was fortunate, in a way – an ice breaker. "Well that was –" Static appeared before his eyes, as though someone switched the relic TV station channel on the entire world.

He came to with Mary hovering over him, looking more scared than he'd ever seen her. He didn't remember where he was. "I must have bumped my head." He certainly never wound up on the ground for no reason before.

"You doofus, you got shot!"

"Aw, crap." Shock and denial were doing great jobs as painkillers, but now Mary removed that completely.

Horst decided to remind them of his presence right at that moment. "Remember me, the guy you're supposed to be protecting?"

"He's right, this is all my fault." Guilt poured into him at how he just endangered them. Guilt was good. It hurt less than the gunshot wound. "Back at the rest stop she dropped a bottle under the car. He must have smeared some kind of acid on the radiator hose. I looked but I didn't see anything."

Mary didn't respond to his confession. "We gotta get you up. We gotta get you to the hospital."

As she helped him to his feet, pain radiated up his shoulder into his throat. "You're mad, aren't you?" He needed Mary angry. Her verbal abuse could distract him.

"Not as mad as I'd be if I was the one that got shot."

"I respect your honesty." He deserved the bullet. He would never forgive himself if Mary had gotten shot.

And then, for the first time, Marshall saw Mary panic. Even though it was useless, she tried to start the SUV, and finally broke down swearing. He needed to redirect her fear, give her some sense of action, an illusion of control. He needed to remind her that as marshals, they both had people. "It's OK," he told her. "In about four hours every cop in the universe will be looking for us."

"Can you hang on that long?"

"I'm breathing and I haven't bled out, which means no vital organs have been hit, so yeah, maybe." He couldn't exactly play down his pain level with a bullet inside him, and losing consciousness once already was a very bad sign. "But this car's about to turn into a pizza oven - we should find some shade." For the first time in their history as partners, he told her what to do, and she listened.

Horst began fussing about food. Marshall considered recommending she shoot him herself, especially now that his suspicions were confirmed that something about the guy was completely off.

As Mary helped him out of the car, he took stock of their resources. No medic kit – they didn't expect to need one for a four hour transfer. The field medicine course he took a month after Mary became his partner came to mind; he really enjoyed the section about all the MacGyver-like emergency treatments. Marshall called up everything he knew or saw when it came to treating gunshot wounds. While not blessed with an eidetic memory, he did have an extended capacity for interest in the world, and hopefully the world if not Mary appreciated that interest enough to save him today.

"Get the tube that connects to the windshield wiper fluid." The hole in his chest might get bigger without it.

"Why?"

"We're gonna need it." He sent a silent note of gratitude upward that a speeding bullet could convince Mary to follow directions. It was reassuring to know that there was such a power in the universe.

The strain that walking to shelter put on his injury was only increasing his risk of a collapsed lung, and there was very little Mary would be able to do if that happened. It was true that no vital organs were hit, and he wasn't bleeding out – yet. But bullets can move around in a living person after they hit you, and the more he moved around, the more he risked death.

Although it cost them precious time, watching Mary kick Horst's ass was a morale boost. Mary picked up, too, that Horst seemed completely out of line with the situation at hand. As Horst lay on the ground, ears likely ringing too loudly to hear their exchange, Mary asked Marshall "What do you think?"

Marshall marveled that she paused for his opinion. He should get shot more often. "I think if it was Lola, she knows that this is her only shot at Mister Personality before he talks to the feds."

"She's coming back."

The entire situation, the day, it was already so surreal. Why not? "Dun dun dunnnn."

"That's real funny coming from a guy with a sucking chest wound."

Marshall felt a little guilty, especially with Mary's obvious worry. "I know." Horst's ass waving in the air made the situation a little hard to take entirely seriously, shot or not.

Marshall was fading in and out when Mary deposited him on the ancient couch inside the old diner. He would hear Mary speak, and then static, and then her speaking again. He vaguely heard her asking for direction. His brain was doing what brains do – sucking up all the available oxygen as a response to the pain and probable blood loss. It was strange how in times of crisis, relevant information floated before him, a book in the air, hallucination with diagrams.

He struggled to clear the static from his vision. "Tubal thoracostomy." He thought in the correct terms, in the actual languages. Technical terms first and always; that was how his father taught him.

A moment later, he heard Mary yelling his name from far away. He was off, somewhere else. Two older men and a woman sat at a card table. Each one of them wore a shoulder holster, and it looked as though they were playing whist. The woman smiled up at him, his own blue eyes crinkling back at him from behind her glasses. "I'm not dealing you in yet, boy."

Both men shared Marshall's lanky build. They were bickering over who got dealt the better hand. One man wore a dark suit that reminded Marshall of the Kennedy era, and the other wore jeans, a denim shirt and a cowboy hat. The man in the hat looked at Marshall over his shoulder. "You better get going there. She can't do this without you." Marshall opened his mouth to ask a question, to say a name -

And then he was back, coughing out bad air, the diagram of medical instructions still hanging in the air as though his memory simply clicked pause until he returned. "Insert tube through bullet wound, second intercostal."

"What?" Mary reacted just as she would if he'd mentioned how Pi was discovered. At least it was comfortingly predictable.

"Put the tube in the hole."

"I hope you know what you're doing." Marshall could almost feel his lung deflating.

The passing in-and-out actually kept the insertion from hurting more. It was an odd side effect of oxygen loss: without enough, nerves just don't feel the need to keep you informed. He began to drift off, vaguely looking for the card table.

Then the stars and static cleared completely as the tube hissed its assistive exhale. He plunked the tube in the water bottle, taking a few breaths of precious air.

Mary stared at the invention. "Amazing!"

"It's a water seal," he explained. "Gravity and hydraulic pressure allow air in the pleural space to escape but not to go back in." She might not know it was preventing a collapsed lung. Then again, she might.

Mary started at him like he'd grown a second head.

"What?"

The broken down restaurant was the only establishment between the gas station and the city limits. He did not like how very vulnerable this left Mary, especially with their uncooperative shit of a witness. "You should go."

She was stubborn about it. "And you should shut up. I'm not leaving you and a witness like sitting ducks." Her panic passed, and now she was back to arguing with him.

Marshall considered Horst. For all of his idiocy, he was able-bodied and completely uninjured. He doubted he would enjoy the man's company and definitely did not want him to be the last person he saw before he died, if that happened. "Take him with you. It's only a couple miles to the highway."

"It's not going to happen. Forget it." Mary was back to digging her heels in.

"Come on. You know it's the right call." She'd been through the same training he had. He wanted her to know she had permission to leave, and if she wound up hurt protecting him he would never forgive himself.

Mary leaned in closer and whispered what they were both thinking. "I could go a lot faster without him." She also didn't want to leave him alone when he was that hurt, and they both agreed that in terms of risk, losing this witness might not be terrible.

Horst apparently had radar ears. He was really watching them entirely too closely. "Wait, what are you talking about?"

"You can't leave him with me, I can't protect him." Their job was to protect their witness, even if one of them was shot. Even a jackass like Horst should come out of a situation like this one alive as long as they both performed their duties.

Marshall and Mary both looked back at Horst, considering. Without exchanging a word, they came to the same conclusion: the job came first.

"You better not die," Mary told him.

Only Mary would order him not to die. Why not life and death? She already had so much power over him. "I will try not to die," Marshall answered, looking into her eyes. "For you."

Mary stared back at him for a ragged moment, and he wondered if she felt an echo of his raw need for her. She reached for her gun. That was probably the only appropriate response.

She gathered up the handcuffed Horst and handed Marshall a fully loaded weapon. "This is for emergencies only. If anyone comes back you play dead, understand?"

"Do I look like a hero to you?"

Mary didn't answer. "I'll be back." But he saw her little nod, and it warmed him.

Horst waffled. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Mary strong-armed him. "Actually this is a terrible idea." She paused. "But what do you expect? It came from him," she jerked her head towards Marshall.

It was the best morale boost he could have gotten.

She checked outside as part of the usual procedure and drew back in immediately. "Change of plans."

As Marshall watched Mary bark orders and set up defenses, he at last understood something about his partner he never had before: she took control when she was scared. Her job scared the hell out of her, most of the time. And it came to him, looking at her moment of uncharacteristic panic earlier that afternoon: the possibility of losing him scared her even more than her job.

She gave him instructions on how to handle anyone coming through the door. "I know the drill." She was always telling him how to do his job even though he'd done it longer.

"I know you do."

Then Horst asked for a gun. "No!"

Time dragged as they sat together while Mary peered out the window. "They're just sitting there." The pain in his chest burned, and the water seal, while functional, might give out soon.

Mary wasn't saying it, but she was asking for his opinion on what was going on. "Probably waiting for nightfall. Improved cover."

"So now we wait."

Horst babbled about a Glen Ford movie. Marshall guessed that he wasn't referring to _Superman_.

Mary mopped sweat off his face. Dehydration might take him if the gunshot didn't, but as long as the bullet stayed in him he could not safely eat or drink. "How are you doing?"

"Aces," he lied. The screaming pain did keep him fully present.

"They used some kind of GPS to find us. I saw her use it. How's that possible?" Mary was asking his opinion for the second or third time that day. Marshall wondered if he was dying or if he was witnessing a preview of Armegeddon.

"I dunno. It's kind of academic at this point." He hadn't seen anything on the SUV when he checked it.

Mary nodded. "Maybe." She sat beside him. "It'll be dark soon."

He still wanted her safe more than anything else. "You should try to get out then."

Mary wanted to ignore him. "Seriously." She could send help back, and he was not the most important directive in their situation.

"It's a defendable position," she snapped back.

Mary fell silent for a moment, and Marshall felt the shift in her mood. It wasn't crisis mode right now – now it was about using what moments they had. "So how come you didn't tell me?"

If he didn't make it out, she had a right to know why.

Marshall really didn't want to hurt her, and he could tell from the way she drew up her knees to her chin that she hurt more deeply than he thought possible. "I needed to make up my own mind. And that's not always an option with you. You know how you are."

She shook her head. "I thought you loved this job." She didn't get it. She didn't connect all the dots.

"I did," he said, and corrected, "I do." He did not love his job in that particular moment, but he did for the most part like what he did: give people a chance to start over. In some ways he felt a little jealous of his clients, because in some ways they enjoyed choices that he never did. When vocal, aggressive Mary became his partner, his entire world changed. Working with her made his job not just a service, but a reason. Mary became his reason.

That reason, that heart, was bleeding from the chest herself. "Well what then? Tell me? Am I the reason you want to go? Because of how I am?"

In that moment Marshall saw Mary as he had never seen her before. She was vulnerable, and scared, and needed someone to protect her. "No." She deserved truth, but did not deserve an additional weight to go with that. "It has more to do with how I am." His feelings about her – for her – were overshadowing his job. Some days it really was too much for him to bear, especially in the narrow world they shared.

Mary did not understand – was not prepared to conceive of – his true meaning. "I can't believe I'm getting the "it's not you it's me" speech from you! Am I really the reason you want to leave the Marshal Service?" She looked close to tears.

"Not exactly." Marshall hated the idea of going every day without seeing Mary, but that very need made him question his ability to do his job well.

Marshall saw the naked punch of rejection on her face. He fought back tears of his own, hurting at Mary's hurt. "Wish they'd come already."

Marshall recognized her pathetic attempt to hide her self-hatred, and something deep within him ached in response. "Look, it's nothing like what you think."

Mary looked back at him, eyes wide. "Then you should probably explain, because I'm pretty confused. I know you loved the job and I though you -" she struggled to say the words and risk more rejection, "I thought we were friends."

Marshall wished he could hug her. "We ARE friends. You're my best friend." He couldn't imagine his life or the Marshal Service without her.

"Jesus, Marshall," and she looked ashamed, "You're like my only friend."

Marshall's heart broke for her. "I know. And you're like, my only friend." It was true. Their codependence encouraged him to shut out anyone new. Mary couldn't recognize that because she was riddled with such dependencies. He was the healthiest person for her in her life, and it was really unhealthy for him.

Mary was still confused. "So? Sounds like a pretty good arrangement. What's the problem?"

"The problem with us is –" He let the real answer hang in the air between them: _I'm in love with you and it's killing me faster than the bullet in my chest._

"Please just tell me," Mary urged.

Marshall paused, trying to tell her the truth without lobbing an emotional grenade at his already over-exposed partner. "I feel like I'm the keeper of this exotic animal. I spend my time either protecting you from the world or the world from you and it's just -," he almost said "too much" but knew it would kill Mary. "It's just a lot of responsibility."

Mary paused, took it in, and accepted it. "I'm sorry, but that's your job." She held his gaze, and Marshall knew before she spoke that she had made his decision for him.

She kissed him on the cheek, and he felt his already straining heart pound a little faster. "And you cannot quit."

As he looked into her eyes, he knew that Mary was what defined his place in the world. "OK." It was never really a choice. He would stay with her. This was all she could give him, and this was all he could take.

Then he started bleeding out. Oh hell, the bullet finally reached an organ. "It's just a little blood," he lied to Mary. "Nothing to worry about."

Mary reacted like she'd told him the truth. She gave him her keys to the cuffs, and he knew what that meant. She might not come back. But if something did happen, they were OK – and that was all that mattered.

"What is she doing?" Something sounded genuine about the fear in Horst's voice.

"She's going to kill them," Marshall answered. "Before they kill us."

The blood loss finally caught up with his brain. Marshall passed out.

Marshall's memories of the rest of the evening were vague. Mary talking, Horst babbling, and then two large, men helping him stagger to an SUV. The weapons were gone. Mary must have made that happen.

He sent a silent thought out as he lay across the backseat: he hoped Mary drove like she stole it.


	8. Chapter 8: Albatross

Special note:

Thank you, thank you, thank you to spud_runner who was kind enough to do a retroactive beta on these pieces. I do like to work with beta readers, and good ones are rare gems.

Like any officer of the law who wound up catching a bullet, Marshall had to visit with the department psychiatrist. Shelley Finkle was a dark-haired woman with an air of professional concern, but something about her made his eyes slide right over her. Female, Caucasian. Occupation: Department of Justice psychiatrist. Despite a high likelihood of very attractive smarts, her radio signal fired off "closed for anything but business." His libido had yet to catch up with his blood loss after the gunshot, so his lack of notice was just as well.

He answered the litany of questions with the correct rote-and-response. No, he was not experiencing anxiety attacks, nightmares, or breaks in concentration. His consumption of alcohol was at a dead stop while he healed. He did not feel helpless, violated or at a loss. Mary's immediate nabbing of Horst's entire team definitely gave him a positive sense of closure. He felt no concern whatsoever about any fallout from Horst or Horst's clients; with the identity of Lola revealed, Horst might not fare so well in prison the second time.

But then she asked a question that gave him pause. "Your director mentioned that you were considering a job change at the time of the incident?"

Marshall inhaled, rubbing his free hand along his chin while he thought about his answer. He stilled his hands and answered. "I was…exploring my options. There are times when my job is my first priority in my life, and I was curious as to what other options I might have."

She wrote something down on a long yellow form in front of her.

"How are you feeling about your job now?"

Marshall spread his fingers and looked into her eyes. "It's what I do."

Shelley fished out a file. "Your partner has a long series of minor incident reports. Actually not to unusual for a marshal in your department," especially since WITSEC marshals could not always declare their motivations, "but still a bit longer than average. Has she had an impact on how you perceive your job?"

Marshall smiled at the thickness of the file. "Marshal Shannon can be a bit intense about her witnesses."

Shelley leaned towards him. "Was your partner a factor in you seeking other employment?"

"I wasn't seeking, just … seeing what else might be available to me." Marshall refused to place any blame on Mary after she saved his life. "Certainly I did consider how my decision might affect her."

"But why were you exploring? A lot of people in your position take a gunshot injury right after interviewing outside the service as a sign it's time to change careers."

Marshall formed his words carefully. "The Marshal Service is what I know. ALL I know. I only spent two years as a police officer in Colorado before I was nominated by a supervisor, and the Marshal Service goes back in my family for five generations."

She tapped her pen and stared at him. "That's impressive."

Marshall flicked the four fingers of his good hand outward, a gesture of dismissal. "No, that's genetics."

"I wasn't talking about your family's legacy, Marshal Mann." Marshall's eyebrows knitted together in response, and she smiled. "I was talking about your capacity, given your family and circumstances, to consider another possibility for your life. Few people really know how to do that."

"Oh. Don't be too impressed. I've decided to stay."

"Yes, but it looks like you're staying for yourself, not for your family's expectations." The psychiatrist wrote something down, and then proceeded on. "Could you tell me about your partner, please, Marshal Mann?"

Marshall's brow furrowed as he considered the doctor. "I'm not sure I understand how this will help you evaluate my fitness for service?"

She smiled. "It won't. I just want to know more about a woman who made two state governors cry."

At the end of the session, the psychiatrist put down her notepad and leaned towards Marshall. "You must be a delight to work with."

He smiled. "My partner doesn't always think so, but her tastes aren't as cultivated as yours."

She laughed. Then her eyes turned absolutely serious while the smile remained on her lips. "I am declaring you fit for service." She raised a finger. "But – I want you to seriously consider building some new relationships in your life. I realize with what you do, it's hard to maintain a support system." She lowered her hand and leaned towards him. "It's obvious to me that you do a lot for your partner, and she does for you, too. That's the way it is with service partners. But you don't have to let your job define you, and surrounding yourself with several positive relationships will keep you sane and strong longer. Since you are continuing in this line of work, you need to start cultivating something for yourself that has no bearing whatsoever on the Marshal Service."

Marshall paused, considering her words. "I agree with your assessment. Thank you."

"Good." She stood at her desk, offering her hand. "Marshal Mann, once that arm heals, you're fully fit for duty. In the meantime, you are fully psychologically qualified as a desk jockey."

He accepted the handshake gladly. "It's good to be back."

Mary called an hour later. "The doctor and the department psychiatrist say I'm fit for duty," he announced. His partner stopped by twice while he was healing. Once, right after he came around from surgery, to tell him that they caught the bastard that shot him, and the second time to tell him to hurry his ass back to work. She called daily with a similar line of conversation.

"That's great!" Mary sounded genuinely pleased. "My witnesses, the Arnsteins, invited me to their art opening, and I won't know what the hell anyone is talking about. Want to come back me up?" While they were not technically required at public events for their witnesses, both marshals found that mingling when their witnesses mingled kept everyone safer – and better at abiding WITSEC rules.

Marshall also remembered the case, and felt very, very glad that Stan did no assign that mess to him. "An art opening really doesn't sound like your kind of thing." It wasn't. Mary's art appreciation rarely extended beyond pausing to wipe drool off of a fireman's calendar.

Her voice lowered, and Marshall guessed she was calling from home. "Raphael's staying with me after he tore up his knee and it's weird," she confessed. Marshall knew that they weren't together, and yet Raphael was staying in her house. He wondered if her sudden interest in caretaking was an extension of guilt about his own injury. "I just want to get out of here for awhile."

Marshall considered. "OK. I'll meet you there." Even though he wanted to see Mary, a little distance from her allowed him a good chance to meet someone, ideally an attractive female someone. His arm sling definitely worked as a conversation starter, especially when he coordinated his sling with his outfit.

Marshall arrived half an hour early. He enjoyed the lingering looks from a few women who walked by him, and intended to strike up a conversation with one or two. Unfortunately, his own curiosity worked against him – he became genuinely fascinated by the artwork, ignoring the women flowing around him. The use of cottonwood resonated with him, and the art as well as its medium brought back childhood memories.

He was reliving an escapade he had playing the Lone Ranger when Mary touched his arm. The fascinating artwork and boyhood memories paled next to the sight of Mary in another little black dress. She greeted him with her rare genuine smile. "Look at you, all upright and not dead! And with a matching sling even – I bet the ladies love that!"

"It's not without effect." He saw the looks. He just forgot to do anything about it.

He began to tell her about the art, the story, what excited him about it. Mary was not interested. "How about we just say our hellos and get the hell out of Dodge. Deal?"

This abbreviated his chance to meet any art lovers. He mentally kicked himself for not striking up any conversations before Mary arrived. "What exactly is your beef with humanity?"

"I have no beef with humanity. It's people I can't stand."

Marshall had no answer for that, and he could tell Mary did not feel ready to resume their friendly hostilities yet. She excused herself when she heard Jay closing a sale like a used car salesman.

Marshall stood back, watching Mary work. He knew she hated Jay and once again Marshall played zookeeper, making sure the exotic animal did not eat the witnesses. He wanted to stay out of it. He hated the situation with the Arnsteins as much as Mary did, and they needed some time to rebuild their rapport.

While Mary performed acts of social formality, he perused the room both for more fascinating works, and for anyone he might enjoy chatting up. Just as he caught the eye of a dark-haired woman holding a glass of cabernet like she didn't know what to do with it, Mary dragged Jay over to him.

"You enjoying the show?" It looked like Mary was in the middle of performance art.

"Oh yeah." Uh oh. "Tell Jay what happens if he dumps Kay and we move her out of town?"

This was actually a tactic they learned in the service, of appealing to male authority. It worked on their more spectacularly stupid witnesses. "If we move Kay, you and Marcie get relocated too." This was specifically was discussed during his intake while Marcie was in the bathroom. How conveniently this man forgot.

"Well that just doesn't seem fair."

Because this guy understood concepts like fairness. "It's a reasonable alternative to having a woman scorned deliver your address to the folks who want you dead."

"Oh." So that was the word for it.

Marshall decided to point out the other glaring error of the night. "This should say planks of cottonwood, since that is in fact on what these are painted."

Jay took the advice with about the same grace as he did the news about his mistress. "I think I know my art," he snapped.

"Apparently not as well as I know my wood." He could already hear Mary shaping a biting remark about his wood and looked at her. "Don't."

The smell of gin warned him of the interruption before he heard the voice. "Well, some party." A blonde in a print dress very similar to Marcie's came staggering in.

Mary looked at the woman like she was a skunk on a mission to soil the driver's seat of her Probe. "Who is this?" he asked her.

"Kay." Marshall had not met Kay. He was out on an emergency with one of his witnesses during her intake. His emergency was that he didn't want to meet her.

As Jay and Mary attempted to move the drunken woman back out of the gallery, Marshall trailed them checking to see if anyone took notice of the disturbing tableau. Then what could go wrong did go wrong, Marcie saw Kay and all hell broke loose.

Mary stood stunned, obviously caught in the dilemma of whether to eliminate Kay by just letting Marcie kill her.

Marshall stepped in. He might be off active duty, but he was still Mary's backup. "OK folks, nothing to see here. Go back to your champagne and 19th century folk art."

The look Mary gave him reminded him that even in that dress, the woman could hide a gun _anywhere_. He stepped backwards. "I'll just –" and then he simply ran for the exit. Mary's witnesses, Mary's cleanup.

Marshall volunteered to drive Kay home, because Mary might just kill her and dump her body. Mary, after blistering Jay with her opinion of his integrity and a few suggestions of where he might stuff his virtue, stormed out to her Probe in an attempt to peel off to the Sunshine Building. The car choked twice, stalled once, and Mary got out and gave something in the undercarriage a swift kick. When she restarted the car, it came to life displaying symptoms of emphysema and then rattled up Central Avenue.

Marshall regarded the woman he just strapped down in his passenger seat. She sat and cried. He could not bring himself to offer a tissue.

"I came out here to be with Jay, and then he leaves me," she gestured wildly out the window, "for that… woman?"

"That woman is his wife. Technically he's not leaving you, just returning to her." Marshall started the car and backed out of his spot.

Kay, to his irritation, continued to talk. "But it isn't right!"

"I'm pretty sure that the moral and ethical lines in this situation are actually very clear." Marshall gripped the steering wheel and hoped for Kay to pass out soon.

Alas, Kay could hold her liquor. "What do you know, Johnny Lawman? I have made _sacrifices_ to be here!"

By the time Marshall arrived at Sunchase Apartment homes, he wanted to shove her out of the car with his foot. Instead, he watched Kay stagger up the walk to her door, trying to remove her shoes as she went.

He stopped by 66 Diner on his way back, just squeaking in before 10 pm. He cursed Kay: only two pieces of pie remained. If Kay had stayed home, he and Mary would have enjoyed a piece of pie of their choice and been on their way to their respective homes by now. He bought the pie slices without identifying them.

Marshall arrived at the office in time to hear Mary leaving Stan her message demanding relocation authorizations.

"Gotta love the ironic phone message." He never left any himself. He also wanted to tread carefully: he had some ground to regain with his partner, although he knew she counted his bullet wound as a mitigating circumstance.

"Did Kay get home alright?" He gave her points for asking.

"Alright being a relative condition, but yes. Pie?" He set a piece down in front of his partner, already knowing the answer. Mary never refused pie.

Mary, he could tell, was still running a "what's wrong with me?" inner dialogue. He wasn't surprised- Stan said she seemed to have a lot of them since his injury. "I shouldn't have gone along with the discussion. It's not like I had a gun to my head."

His old philosophy TA really enjoyed puzzles like this, and Marshall almost wished he could call up Dana and tell her about Mary's dilemma. They used to drive his old study group crazy concocting scenarios just like it to prepare for their critical thinking and ethics tests. "Actually an immoral decision made under duress is still an immoral decision. Understandable, yes, forgivable, perhaps, but still definitely immoral." The look on Mary's face told him she did not enjoy his intellectual exploit. "I'm just sayin'. If you didn't do it they would have found someone else to do it." It was true, and most marshals in WITSEC just don't bother taking moral stands. Mary's face reminded him of a puppy his cousin accidentally kicked. "Eat your pie. Pie makes everything better!"

Mary tucked into her pie. "It does help." Mary's act of acceptance meant a lot to Marshall. First, pie, then, not eventually killing him.

It was a happy moment until the phone rang. "House of Pie!"

The call was actually Bobby Dershowitz. He had a Jay Arnstein that was shot, and the emergency contact on his form said Mary Shannon rather than his wife. Bobby sounded displeased. As Marshall hung up the phone and communicated the situation with Mary, the wheels in his head turned. This situation made Mary volatile, and Mary made Dershowitz volatile for reasons she refused to notice.

Mary asked as they checked the files of their witnesses before leaving, "Maybe we should change into something more official before we go down there?" Both routinely kept changes of clothes in the office. While technically marshals were allowed to go plainclothes, certain types of clothing implied uniform. As much as Marshall enjoyed James Bond movies, their dressy attire was not on that list.

He considered Mary, still in her enjoyable little black dress. "No," Marshall answered. "Let's go as is." Dershowitz was a man who appreciated wardrobe, and one way or the other, he knew they would see him tonight.

On the way to the hospital, Marshall called the detective back. Bobby D. was definitely in a hostile mood, and it sounded worse than when he initially called. "I seem to have two women here who both have requested the presence of your partner," he said. "Is she a patron saint of women scorned?"

Marshall grimaced, reminding himself to keep it professional. "She's got a situation on her hands right now, but I'll check with her." At least they knew where their witnesses were. He had to give it to Dershowitz: the idea of Mary as some type of revenge fairy was funny.

"Is that situation a certain gunshot victim?"

"I really can't say."

Next came the conversations with INTERPOL and a flurry of calls to prisons. It appeared they only almost had a security breach thanks to Kay.

At the hospital, Mary was already working the case. While Marshall wasn't sure Jay could tell her anything relevant with an oxygen tube stuck down his throat, it gave her a focus besides any hapless staff in her way while he gave directions to the personnel around them.

As Mary extracted herself from the panicked roll-away, he filled her in. Mary's first thought was to the person she considered _her_ witness. "I need to move Marcie."

"And…?" He did fear that one day Mary might turn a particularly obnoxious witness over to the criminals with a note saying "Free! Take one!" After his fifteen minutes with Kay, the day might come very soon.

"And Kay."

"They're both in police custody!" It came as no surprise to either of them. And they knew where both witnesses were, saving them some work.

"Anything on the art smuggler side of this?"

"We didn't hear back from Frawley." Frawley was the agent who broke the case. The only people that wanted Jay and his loved ones dead were almost all out of the picture.

"So this just leaves the American side of it." It looked highly unlikely to Marshall, but he knew Mary did not want to think her witness might shoot her own husband.

"Or Kay, or Marcie." She might not like it, but Mary had to look at the whole picture.

"Marcie didn't do this."

She was probably right, and while innocent until proven guilty, within the confines of their work they still needed to prove innocence by eliminating the possibility of guilt. "You don't have to convince me, but the Albuquerque PD doesn't share your conviction." He really wanted to avoid a showdown between Mary and Bobby. "You got a plan to get them out?"

"If they didn't get arrested I don't need a plan, they're coming with me." That was the standard procedure.

"And if they are arrested?" This was actually a drill they rehearsed for years. It felt good, this rapid-fire strategy review, allowing them to reconnect over what they did best, together.

"Then we cooperate with all local law enforcement agencies as is our obligation." Mary pouted a little, and he could almost hear her thinking, _stupid obligation_.

"I do love it when you talk protocol." It really was the equivalent of Mary showing up in a French maid's outfit.

He smirked when she said, "Watch me work." While she operated, believing Bobby gave over to her out of professional respect, Marshall stood back and watched her dress do all the heavy lifting.

Then he saw Kay sitting at Bobby D's desk, and he groaned inwardly. "Love the new uniforms," Bobby D. commented. Marshall smiled to himself. Yes, Mary's dress was already doing its work.

Kay turned her full attention to Mary. "They are keeping me against my will. Please tell this moron I have diplomatic immune-tee."

The stupidity was just as spectacular as it has been two hours ago. Mary was impressively polite in return, getting into her "we're all colleagues here" character. "I'm sure detective Dershowitz has a good reason for keeping you here."

Bobby D's admission that shooting her had crossed his mind as well did make Marshall warm towards the detective. Both men shared certain tastes.

Bobby D. launched himself out of his desk. Marshall could tell he wanted the excuse to get away from Kay, and an excuse to perhaps have Mary to himself. "You want coffee?"

Although the offer wasn't for him, Marshall felt the need to remind the detective of his presence. "I'm good."

"I'd absolutely love some." She looked back at her partner, on the surface signaling a "watch the pro" but in reality seeking his reassurance.

Marshall gave his partner a thumb's up, swallowing a snigger at Mary's ganache-level sweetness.

While Mary turned what she thought were her professional charms on Bobby D., Marshall focused on the personality problem still seated at the detective's desk. "For future reference, diplomats have diplomatic immunity. You're in witness protection, and have no immunity from anything whatsoever. Can you see the difference there?"

Judging from the blank, tearful glare she gave him, she did, but could not process any further humiliation for the night. "Why don't you come on back here with me." He jerked his head towards the interrogation rooms. Kay could not be trusted with anything she might hear Dershowitz and Mary say, and he wanted to separate her from Marcie and Mary right away. Kay's stagger made it clear her drinking continued long after he dropped her off.

He planted Kay in a chair and then bought several bottles of water from a break room vending machine. Marshall slammed down each one in front of her.

"We're going to need to relocate you, but first I need you sober." Kay made a whimpering noise, but reached forward, opened a bottle and took a sip.

He left Kay in the room and wandered down the hallway, looking for someone who might let him use a breathalyzer.

It took Kay almost three hours to consume and expel enough water for her blood alcohol levels to register as legally sober. This gave him time to arrange a room and 24-hour protection. This also meant listening to her sob, whine, demand, and at one point, fall off her chair.

He ran over the procedures with her in the car and on the way up to the motel room in an effort to reduce time spent with her. "There will be a security team posted in the parking lot at all times -"

Kay got a look at the room, and Marshall encountered the full force of her sober personality. "No, no, I have life-threatening allergies." She grabbed a pad and pen from the hotel stand, and began writing a list of what she needed to "survive these conditions."

He reviewed the list with disgust. "Cigarettes? I thought you were allergic to smoke."

"Good point." She added smokeless ashttray to the list. She then shoved him out of her room.

Marshall stood outside the room a moment, recognizing the unwelcome task ahead."Oh boy." A hostile witness was the one thing worse to work with than a hostile partner.

Marshall tucked the list in his wallet. He could run to a 24 hour Wal-Mart and pick up most of the list and be back in an hour. But going home and getting a proper night's rest seemed much more appealing. He somehow doubted Kay was at risk of death overnight, but if she didn't survive those conditions, Marshall would struggle to blame himself.

Ten hours later Marshall took a sadistic glee in handing Kay her bag of demands. "I hope this fills the void," he said and marched away.

Kay responded exactly how he wanted her to. "What is that supposed to mean?" He kept walking as she called him a mailman with a gun. She received his message: "You are not as important as you want to think you are."

The next visit he didn't even bother to open the door. He left the bag outside the door, knocked and yelled, "Lunch!" He needed her to feel rejected, because rejection forced Kay into pursuit.

Kay appeared at the door, looking sober and slightly less made up. "Wait. What is this?"

"Chicken salad on a baguette with garlic aioli." Judging from the look on Kay's face, she did not know he was capable of refined culinary choices. "You're welcome."

"Explain the void remark." She sounded near tears.

"I think you know."

He could see his words echoing in her, ricocheting painfully off her complete absence of real connection to anyone. She opened he door a little wider and gestured to him. "Come in."

Marshall entered, into the void.

Thus began one of the longest afternoons of his life. He almost but not quite found Horst's assassination attempt preferable. Kay's monologue on why she felt empty, how Jay filled that void and why she needed the man did make Marshall hurt for her: the woman clearly had an absent father-figure and in some ways Kay reminded him of his partner's sister, Brandy, albeit a more educated and arguably successful version of her.

At last, she said, "So you see, he should be with me, especially since I've given up my very identity to be with him!"

Marshall began with simply, "No."

Kay did not want to accept this. "Can't you consider the possibility that I'm the one that's supposed to be with Jay, not her, that ours is the true, pure love?"

He pretended to consider it, and found it echoed within him. How he was paired with Mary, but Mary sought out Raphael. "Nope. Our universe seeks order, and I'm afraid in this situation, you represent," he paused to consider the word choice, "entropy." Entropy, like the chaos that could have ensued if he had laid out his feelings for Mary on the table instead of seeking a different job. He wondered for a moment if he would need to explain the word to Kay.

Kay, it turned out, was much smarter when sober. "I don't want to represent entropy." His heart broke for her a little. He didn't want to represent entropy, either.

Marshall's phone rang, rattling him from his moment of empathy for the woman. "Hey, what's up? I'm kind of…in the middle of something." While Mary typically ignored his schedule, he hoped that one of her concessions to him after he almost left his job was demonstrating more respect for his time. Especially since keeping this albatross of a witness out of Mary's hair was actually a significant favor for her benefit.

"How sure are you that the paintings were done on cottonwood?" Mary might not act like it but ultimately she caught every detail of what he said.

"I grew up playing in a stand of cottonwood. It's a deciduous wood, strong, but much lighter than say an oak." He missed his days in northern Colorado, performing target practice out in the woods. He held a great affection for those trees.

"So if the artist actually did paint on poplar you would conclude…?"

"The gallery paintings are fakes." A-ha. So that was why Jay argued with him.

"Thanks Poindexter."

"Rock steady."

He turned his attention to Kay, who was now sobbing on the bed. "that's it, let it out. This is tough stuff we're doing." He brought her a tissue.

"I should never have stepped in the middle of someone else's marriage." It was the first time since he encountered her she showed a sign of other-awareness.

His empathy for a moment deepened, as he thought of Mary and a Dominican shortstop. "And with the onset of wisdom, comes transformation."

Kay ruined the moment of enlightenment as she did many moments, by opening her mouth. "I should have insisted he get a divorce."

"That's not quite the direction that we – " his alarm bells went off. Kay shifted off the bed towards him, her body moving in a familiar – albeit distantly so – liquid flow. His surprise made him freeze, leaving him trapped between Kay and the dresser.

"Make love to me Marshall." She pulled her blouse open, and the part of Marshall that was pure guy got a good long look at a fantastic bra.

Before she could kiss him, he snapped back control of his libido. "I see we've still got some work to do." He pushed her off and walked out of the hotel room, got in his car, and took a long, cold shower.

Mary's idea for the bust was simple, and she was vastly amused by the opportunity to make her partner where a wig and fake mustache. As he lay in the bed, the fake hair itched like hell.

Margaret made her murder attempt, and his fake seizure allowed him to scratch a couple spots where the itching was driving him especially crazy. He allowed the woman to babble "Something's wrong with Jay!" for a bit after Mary ran in.

Ultimately Mary was supposed to pull the sheet off of him, but Marshall just could not stand the itching. "I think it was the poison you injected into my IV."

He and Mary looked at each other. As partners, they were back.

At the end game, Bobby turned towards Mary. "Y'all drive home safely." The detective's eyes scanned over Marshall and settled on Mary.

Marshall gave him a curt nod. The well wishes were not for him. He felt strangely unbothered by the man's interest in his partner.

Stan wanted to know how it happened, and Mary's referral to him as "Johnny Cottonwood" made him smile and tip his imaginary hat. It felt good to know that Mary really did respect his opinion.

A few hours later he returned to Kay's motel room. "We need to talk about what happened."

Kay let him in. She had the look on her face of a person who hit self-awareness and found the discovery depressing. "What's wrong with me?" This might be a regression. "Why doesn't anyone want me?"

Marshall sighed. "Sit down." She went to sit down on the bed. "On the chair."

He pulled up another chair and they sat face to face. "Let me put it this way: are your choices making you happy?"

Kay bit her lip, chewing on what he said for a moment. "No, they're not."

"Then you need to find something new, cleanse yourself of your bad choices and start over. I don't think you belong in witness protection, do you?"

Kay looked down at the floor for a moment, and then looked at him, a newfound clarity brightening her face. "You're right. I don't belong here." She got up from her chair and went to the door. "Good night marshal. Please meet me here tomorrow morning."

Marshall stood up, puzzled, but sensing that in her emotional arc, she needed an exit. As he left she called after him, "And please bring whatever forms I need to fill out."

The next morning, she greeted him with a martini glass in her hand. "Let's go down to the pool."

"Why?"

"I need a little ceremony to mark my leaving the program. "

She led Marshall to the pool, and for a frightening moment he thought she might strip. Kay turned towards Marshall, her eyes seeing so much more than herself. "You might want to dip your toes in the water yourself there."

Marshall discovered that morning that his boots were surprisingly water proof. Kay stood fully clothed on the edge of the diving board, martini glass in one hand, cigarette in the other. This was definitely not how Marshall expected to spend his Tuesday morning. The situation still felt crazy to him. "You know, you really don't have to do this. When we speak of cleansing, it's figurative. More metaphorical than an actual soap and water deal."

Kay shrugged. "Yeah. Well, I tend to take things literally."

The albatross of a witness left WITSEC with a splash, and something in Marshall's own heart felt oddly clean as she went.

That afternoon, when Mary returned from transferring Jay and Marcie, he marched over to her desk. "I have a present for you!" He dropped Kay's opt-out card in front of her.

Mary picked up, and her smile lit up his day. "You're going to have to tell me how you did this?"

"Maybe over a piece of pie?"

Mary tucked the card under her keyboard. "Hell yes!"


	9. Chapter 9: a Passion for Logic

**University of New Mexico, sometime in the early 1990s:**

It happened during a midterms study session. The TA for Marshall's Logic and Critical Thinking class reviewed truth and specious arguments, surrounded by overloaded students fulfilling philosophy requirements. He loved the switch between inductive and deductive reasoning, and the constant drilling of each and every concept until only the most solid construction of thought could remain. He dreamed of using those skills in politics, or perhaps even teaching the arts of critical thinking himself. It was sexy, forbidden, a little fantasy he held dear where he went into something other than the law. Marshall's study group did not share his passion.

That night, stress spread through the assembly and felled each member, one by one. The first, a tense and reedy-looking blond man also in Marshall's social psychology class, threw his books and papers in the air, then ran out of the library screaming. When discussion moved to Venn diagrams and inference, a solid-looking dark-haired man that played for the hockey team made eye contact with the blue-haired punk girl that spit at the guy a week before as her response to a failed argument demonstration. He jerked his head towards a study room. She shrugged, and shortly thereafter they disappeared behind the door with a click, neither bothering to make excuses. Not long after a bluish smoke appeared from beneath the crack of the door, and through the window Marshall could only see fog. Evidently someone else's midterm meltdown involved removing all the batteries from the smoke detectors in the library. A passing security officer sniffed, muttered "midterms" and shrugged. The last to go down was the chubby brunette that Marshall suspected of cheating off him; she collapsed face first into her textbook, pleading "Someone, hit me with a brick. Hard. If I am hit with a brick, I will be unconscious, and therefore I will feel better." A moment later she passed out with a line of drool underlining a passage about syllogism in the text. Marshall leaned over and sniffed her sixteen ounce bottle of Sunny Delight: its scent resembled a citrus lighter fluid.

Dana Collins, the TA that he joined the group for, smiled at him. "Last one standing, Marshall. We could go into sophisms but I suspect that you would probably school me."

He smiled back. "But I so enjoy your perspective, Ms. Collins."

She took off her glasses and rubbed the back of her neck. "Please, call me Dana."

This was Marshall's first look at Dana without her glasses, and the ambient hormones of stress and release lurking in the library air finally overtook him. His sexy librarian fantasy came to life. He wondered what she looked like with the cardigan off. He wondered what she looked like with her pants off. "Dana," he said, walking around the table behind her. "May I do that for you?"

She made a sound of assent and he placed his hands on her shoulders. He gently brushed her neck with his fingers, appreciating the curve of her neck and the smoothness of her skin.

Dana shivered, and dropped the cardigan off her shoulders, revealing a thin pearl-colored camisole beneath. She reached behind her and stilled Marshall's hands, then stood up, loosening her hair from its scrunchy. She took Marshall's hand, and without a word, led him to a nearby broom closet. She switched on the light, shut the door behind them, and guided Marshall's hands sensually beneath her shirt.

For the rest of the semester, Marshall's study sessions were followed by tutoring in the broom closet. Never was a man more passionate about logic.


End file.
